The Federation is at peace when warring with the feds

In as much as the premiers can all agree, the semi-annual meetings – always held in some postcard perfect Canadian tourist trap – are fruitful in moving policy.

But nothing moves where the premiers’s interests don’t line up. A leader who arrives with a certain axe to grind is forced to pack it home and find some other way to force it to the national forefront.

This week’s meeting in picturesque Niagara-on-the-Lake had both elements of unity and division, and where the united fronts did emerge, the Council of the Federation continued to cement its reputation as a 13-person thorn in the federal government’s side.

Such was the dynamic when the premiers – after having met with national aboriginal leaders on Wednesday – joined the growing call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.

“The premiers at the table agreed to support the call of the (Native Women’s Association of Canada) on this very very important issue that really has touched every one of our jurisdictions,” said council chair Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

A formal request for an inquiry has yet to be made, and so much of what the call entails is still unknown. But federal Justice Minister Peter Mackay rebuffed the call through the media, arguing current reactions to the crisis are enough or – in the case of a parliamentary committee study on the matter – have yet to conclude.

Punt that fight off for another day.

The real fight in wine country was over the Canada Job Grant, the new job training program that was advertised on television before it was even ratified by Parliament, and intended as the next block of Ottawa’s seemingly eternal “Economic Action Plan.”

Because the program is in large part intended to close the skilled labour shortage in the resource sector, the word in Ottawa was that it was something the western provinces favoured.

But the Council of the Federation meeting doused that illusion.

The premiers spoke forcefully over the meeting’s three days about how the Canada Job Grant is a unilaterally imposed, bank account-depleting intrusion on provincial jurisdiction.

“There was unaminity around the table that they way it was designed, it is inadequate and will not work,” said Wynne, at the council’s final press conference.

The premiers want to sit down with the federal minister in charge, likely Minister of Empoyment and Social Development Jason Kenney, and talk about redesigning the program. Labour Minister Kelly Leitch went on the CBC’s Power and Politics Thursday night to say Kenney will negotiate the program with each province, but she didn’t accept the premiers’ call for an opt-out clause from the program nor their general criticism that it’s severely flawed.

The council put B.C. Premier Christy Clark and New Brunswick Premier David Alward in charge of studying the topic and bringing their thoughts to the next Council of the Federation meeting.

The premiers say the new program will cost them $600 million. If you take that and add how much the federal Tories see the grant as the keystone in their economic policy and a critical piece of their 2015 re-election strategy (they really want it to roll out sometime next year,) the Canada Job Grant looks like it’ll be on shaky ground for some time.

The premiers took aim at a whole whack of other employment programs, too. The federal government’s changes to employment insurance, a pressure on regions with lots of seasonal workers like the Maritimes, will also be further studied by the premiers, they said.

The Temporary Foreign Workers program, a staffing life-line for Tim Hortons’ and Canadian Tires across the country, needs to grow and caps on immigration levels through the Provincial and Territorial Nominee Programs also need to be increased, the premiers said. Both are federal programs.

The premiers want the workers shortage to remain at the centre of national debate in the country, and they’ll do so by having their labour ministers to host a symposium on skills and training. They also directed their education ministers to talk about aligning secondary and post-secondary school policy.

Alberta’s flooding, Lac-Megantic’s train derailment, increased crude oil tanker ships and new shipwrecks put disaster mitigation at the top of the agenda.

The premiers asked Ottawa to enforce insurance liability rules for rail companies that appear not to have been in place at the Maine, Montreal and Atlantic Railway Inc., the company involved in the Lac-Megantic disaster. Nova Scotia Premier Darrel Dexter said the same thing should be happening for shipping companies transporting oil near Canada’s coastline.

Not every consensus isssue was about sticking to the feds, though.

The premiers showed off some progress on their long-running work on healthcare: price negotiations with drug companies for10 brand name drugs and six generic drugs are done. The provinces are also going to reduce uncessary diagnostic imaging that has ballooned healthare costs, and they will look at how to keep seniors in their own homes rather than in institutional facilities.

Some premiers are leaving sunny Niagara-on-the-Lake without winning the agenda.

There was anticipation mid-conference that Saskathewan Premier Brad Wall’s push for Senate abolishement might find some traction with the number of NDP governments at the table and the public anger over senators embroiled in expense scandals in Ottawa.

On Friday morning, however, it was clear the support wasn’t there. Throughout the day, everyone from Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to Prince Edward Island Robert Ghiz voiced opinions contradictory to Wall’s.

” I consider discussion about the Senate a huge distraction from the central preoccupation of every government in Canada, all of the premiers around this table, and that’s growing our economies,” said Clark, B.C.’s premier, at the council’s final news conference.

Wynne left her mark by making infrastructure spending a part of the premiers’ work toward resolving “fiscal imbalances” between the federal, provincial and territorial governments; but she didn’t get anything like a unanimous call for the national transit strategy that she’s been talking about in past months.

Somewhere in the middle, between agreement and disagreement, lies the not-so national energy strategy touted by Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

Neither B.C. nor Quebec are joining the strategy, but that wasn’t really news. Clark has long said she won’t join the strategy until a dispute over the Northern Gateway pipeline is resolved, and Quebec notified the council in April that it wouldn’t sign onto something that might offend the current government’s sovereignist sensibilities.

Still, both provinces agree with the “values” in the strategy and may simply adopt energy policies ideologically similar to it while not officially joining.

The strategy will likely be dormant until next July, when the premiers meet for the next Council of the Federation meeting in Prince Edward Island.

That’s when the premiers hope to finally sign a final strategy, says a progress report released by the council Thursday.